It is oftentimes desirable to archive various types of data such that the data may be retrieved years later, such as hundreds of years. From the professional perspective, it may be desirable, for example, to archive governmental, corporate or financial records. Similarly, from the personal perspective, it may be desirable to archive audio and/or video recordings or the like.
Historically, microfilm has been employed as an archival medium. Microfilm is advantageous because microfilm can exist for hundreds of years, such as in excess of five hundred years, with minimum maintenance. Microfilm is designed to record images, such as images of documents. By way of example, images of a newspaper or other publications are often stored on microfilm. These analog images have typically been recorded on microfilm using a photographic “flash” exposure process from the original paper document. Relatively recently, recording systems have been developed that expose microfilm using a light emitting diode (LED) “printing process” that removes any need to print an image to paper and, instead, allows an image to be recorded directly on microfilm. For example, Eastman Kodak Company has developed a document archive writer, such as the Model 4800 Document Archive Writer, for recording images directly on microfilm. These writers are generally referred to as Computer-Output-Microfilm (COM) recording systems.
In order to retrieve the data recorded on microfilm, a print of the image stored by the microfilm is obtained. As a result of the characteristics of the microfilm, as well as the techniques for recording data to and reading data from microfilm, the result may be a grainy, high contrast photographic print of the image that is stored by the microfilm. While acceptable for many types of analog data, such as images of a newspaper or other publications, the resulting, relatively low resolution images are generally unacceptable for binary data. In this regard, binary data, also known as digital data, computer data, computer files or the like, consists of a series of ones and zeros. This sequence of ones and zeros must be faithfully maintained in the recording and retrieval process or else the entire file of binary data may become meaningless and garbled beyond recognition. Since the archival requirements for binary data require the reproduction of an exact duplicate of the original binary data, microfilm has therefore not been thought to be an acceptable archival medium for binary data.
As a result, binary data has typically been stored on other types of media that have been predicted to have a relatively long life time. For example, binary data is commonly stored on optical disks, including compact disks, that are intended to last for decades. The ability to store binary data on optical disks for decades is sufficiently long for most data, but may not be acceptable for archival purposes, for some data is desirably stored for hundreds, not tens, of years. Compounding this problem, some optical media has been found to not last as long as originally advertised by the manufacturer such that the optical media may not even reliably store the binary data for decades as advertised.
Even if optical disks or other digital media were capable of faithfully storing the binary data for decades or longer, problems may arise because the equipment required to retrieve the binary data becomes obsolete and unsupported long before the lifespan of the optical media expires. Thus, even though the optical media may be capable of storing binary data for decades, it is questionable if the equipment required to read the binary data from the optical media will similarly exist and be supported decades from now.
As a result, binary data may be stored to a first medium, such as an optical disk, from some period of time and thereafter migrated from the first medium to another medium as newer media is developed. By migrating the binary data from an older medium to a newer medium, problems associated with the potential obsolescence of the equipment required to retrieve the binary data and the problems associated with the lifespan of the medium itself are generally overcome. However, the migration of the binary data creates additional problems of its own including the expense, both in terms of hardware and personnel required to conduct the migration. In addition, with each migration of the binary data from one medium to another, errors may occur in the retrieval and subsequent rewriting of the binary data with even small errors potentially rendering the binary data meaningless as noted above.
As such, an improved technique for preserving binary data would therefore be advantageous. In this regard, improvements in the preservation of binary data become even more important with increases in the quantity, importance and archival life of the binary data. In particular, it would be advantageous to develop an improved technique for accurately preserving binary data for hundreds of years without having to migrate the binary data from one archival medium to another and without concern regarding the obsolescence of the equipment required to retrieve and interpret the binary data from the archival medium.